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NHL lockout threatens small business owners with crushing weight of boredom

One more “OMG the hockey lockout is costing businesses money!” story today, from NBC4 in Columbus, which reports that “many businesses in the Arena District” are hoping for the lockout to end, because:

“I think for the good of the game, I think both sides know that they have to get there,” said Mike Darr, owner of the R-Bar Arena.

Darr said it would be nice to have the extra revenue from hockey fans coming in, but the lockout has not hurt his business too much.

“It’s still a fun area to hang around in. There are a lot of neighborhoods, we are kind of a neighborhood bar also. It’s not been detrimental. It’s just sometimes been boring,” Darr explained.

Darr is the only arena-area small business owner quoted, so it’s hard to say how typical his experience is. Still, somebody might want to pass along to the city and state officials wringing their hands over lost tax revenues that people haven’t stopped drinking beer now that hockey is no longer being played — they’re just crying into it instead. Or rather, given that it’s the Blue Jackets we’re talking about, crying into it even more than usual.

I like how the website for R-bar has a banner “Welcome Hockey Fans…It’s time to kick off the 2011 season and what better place to do it than R Bar in the arena district…GO BLUEJACKETS” and names themselves “the official bar of the Columbus Blue Jackets”. I bet the sales of merchandise at the official blue jackets team store has taken a hit too.